Why Your Travel Agency Inquiries Dropped (And The 3-Step Plan That Actually Works)

“My personal revenue in sales was 1.9 million in vacation sales just for 2024. So in 2025, we’re midway through October and I’m only at 1.3.”

When Sarah said those words on our consultation call, I heard the same confusion I’d been hearing from travel agency owners all year. Not frustration about bad SEO tactics. No complaints about lazy marketing teams.

Confusion.

“I don’t understand what happened. My website’s fine. My reviews are great. I post regularly on Google. Everything that used to work just… stopped working.”

Here’s what Sarah didn’t know: Her inquiries didn’t disappear because she did something wrong. They vanished because Google fundamentally changed the game in May 2024—and nobody told travel agencies what the new rules were.

If your inquiry volume dropped in 2024 and you’ve been searching for answers, you’re not alone. You’re not crazy. Something massive shifted in how travelers find agencies like yours.

I’m going to show you exactly what happened, why traditional SEO agencies can’t fix it, and the three-step plan that actually works in this new reality.

I’m Chris Raulf, and I’ve been doing SEO since the late 90s—almost 30 years. I speak globally about AI and search, teach at the University of Strasbourg, and serve as SE Ranking’s Brand Ambassador. If you search “international AI and SEO expert,” you’ll find my personal website at #1.

Here’s why I actually understand what you’re going through:

In 2021, my own agency lost 80% of our organic traffic overnight. One Google algorithm update. Everything we’d built—gone. I spent an entire weekend figuring out what fundamentally changed and invented the methodology that saved our business.

Then, in 2024, I watched the same pattern unfold with travel agencies. Except this time, the disruption was bigger. Most agencies still don’t realize what hit them.

So yeah—I get it. When your inquiry volume craters and nobody can tell you why, it’s terrifying. When every SEO agency you talk to gives you the same recycled advice that clearly isn’t working, it’s maddening.

You deserve to know what actually happened. And what to do about it.

The Invisible Enemy That Intercepts Your Customers

In May 2024, Google fully rolled out something called AI Overviews—those AI-generated summaries that appear at the top of search results before any actual websites.

By October 2024, they were showing up in over 42% of all searches. For travel-related queries? Even higher.

Here’s what that means in plain English:

When someone searches “best beaches in Turks and Caicos,” “how to plan a trip to Greece,” or “things to do in Tanzania,” Google now answers the question completely without the traveler ever visiting your website.

They get a comprehensive AI-generated summary pulling information from multiple sources. Right there at the top. No clicking required.

The traveler gets their answer. Learns what they need to know. Moves on to the next question.

And you never even had a chance to tell them you exist.

This creates a vicious cycle that’s killing travel agencies:

1. Travelers research trips entirely through AI Overviews
2. They get educated, compare options, narrow choices—all without visiting your site
3. By the time they’re ready to book, they’ve already decided who to work with
4. Or worse—they’ve decided they don’t need an agent at all

You keep doing everything the “experts” told you to do. Creating great content about destinations. Optimizing your Google Business Profile. Getting five-star reviews. Posting regularly on social media. Building backlinks.

But your inquiry volume keeps dropping.

Here’s the part that keeps you up at night: You don’t know if you’re doing something wrong, if you need to spend more on marketing, if you should fire your SEO agency, or if the entire travel agency business model is dying.

The real problem? You’re playing by 2019 rules in the AI-search era.

Every SEO agency you talk to keeps giving you the same outdated playbook. “We’ll optimize your meta tags.” “We’ll build you more backlinks.” “We’ll create more blog content.” “We’ll improve your site speed.”

Those tactics still matter. But they don’t solve your actual problem.

Your actual problem: AI systems are intercepting your customers before those customers even know you exist. Traditional “rank on page one” SEO doesn’t fix that.

You need a fundamentally different strategy. One explicitly designed for AI-first search.

I know this because I watched it happen to me personally.

I Am The Customer You Lost

My wife and I just hiked Kilimanjaro. Three-week trip—Kilimanjaro summit, Serengeti Safari, then Zanzibar beach time.

I planned the entire thing myself using Google.

Here’s exactly what I did:

Every search returned an AI Overview. “What to pack for Kilimanjaro” gave me a complete packing list. “Best time to climb Kilimanjaro,” explained weather patterns. “8-day Lemosho route success rates” broke down route comparisons. “What to expect at 15,000 feet altitude” provided altitude sickness guidance.

I read each AI Overview. Got my answer. Moved to the next question.

I barely clicked on any travel websites.

The only time I actually visited a travel agency site? When I was ready to book. That’s the moment I needed a human transaction. That’s when I finally clicked the blue links.

Here’s the brutal truth: I am exactly the customer travel agencies lost in 2024.

I’m an experienced international traveler who usually plans my own trips. But even people who typically use travel agents are now doing this research phase in AI Overviews. They’re getting educated without ever finding you.

By the time they’re ready to talk to someone, they’ve already eliminated 90% of their options.

If you don’t adapt to this new reality, here’s what happens:

3 months from now: Inquiry volume continues declining. You cut expenses trying to stay profitable.

6 months from now: Competitors who figured this out are capturing the market share you’re losing. Their names appear in AI Overviews. Yours doesn’t.

12 months from now: You’re spending more on paid ads trying to compensate for lost organic inquiries. Profit margins shrink. The business that took years to build becomes unsustainable.

The agencies that survive aren’t the ones spending the most on marketing. They’re the ones who understood the shift and adapted early.

The Data Proves This Isn’t Just Anecdotal

Multiple independent studies documented this exact pattern throughout 2024-2025:

• Conductor: Organic traffic drops as high as 60% on pages affected by AI Overviews
• Ahrefs: AI Overviews reduced click-through rates by 15.49% on average
• Combined AI Overview + Featured Snippet: CTR dropped 37%
• Major travel publishers: 50-70% traffic declines reported
• Zero-click searches: Now 69% of all queries (up from 34% in 2017)

The travel industry got decimated because trip planning is exactly what AI Overviews were designed for. People ask questions. AI provides comprehensive answers. Travelers research without clicking.

When I analyzed Sarah’s website, her blog post about beach destinations ranked on page 2 for a keyword with 90,000 monthly searches. Five years ago, getting that to page one would’ve generated consistent inquiries.

Today? Even at position #3, most of those 90,000 searches see an AI Overview first.

The cruel irony: Your content is good enough that Google uses it to train AI. But that AI now intercepts the traffic your content should have generated.

Why Your Current SEO Agency Can’t Fix This

So Sarah did what any savvy business owner would do. She started calling SEO agencies.

Most told her variations of the same thing. “We’ll do comprehensive keyword research.” “We’ll optimize your on-page SEO.” “We’ll build high-quality backlinks.” “We’ll create a content calendar.” “We’ll improve your technical SEO.”

All of that is fine. Those tactics still have value.

But here’s what nobody told Sarah: Those are 2019 solutions to a 2024 problem.

The fundamental challenge isn’t that your website is poorly optimized. The challenge is that search itself has changed.

Old game: Rank on page one → Get clicks → Generate inquiries

New game: Get cited by AI → Establish authority → Capture high-intent moments

Most SEO agencies are still optimizing for the old game. Which is why their strategies no longer work.

How We Figured Out What Actually Works (The Hard Way)

In 2021, Boulder SEO Marketing got hit by a Google core algorithm update. We lost 80% of our organic traffic overnight.

Not ideal for an SEO agency.

I had two choices: Go out of business, or figure out what fundamentally changed and build a methodology around it.

I took a weekend. Analyzed everything. Realized the algorithm wasn’t looking for the same signals anymore. It wanted a different content structure, different authority signals, and different optimization approaches.

That weekend, I invented Micro SEO Strategies℠—a trademarked content marketing and SEO methodology focused on surgical precision instead of broad-spectrum tactics. Instead of trying to rank for everything, we’d take pages already ranking positions 11-30 and optimize them specifically to reach page one.

It worked. We recovered. Then, my team and I kept testing and refining.

When AI Overviews rolled out in May 2024, I saw the pattern again. Different challenge, same principle needed: Focused execution beats generic volume.

So I spent six days building what we call BSM Copilot—an AI SEO agent running across multiple large language models, doing research work that used to take our team weeks.

Here’s why this matters for you:

I’m not some consultant who read about AI search disruption in a blog post. I lived through losing 80% of my traffic and had to invent the solution to survive.

I’m not theorizing about how travelers use AI Overviews. I am the traveler who used them to plan my Kilimanjaro trip without visiting travel agency websites.

I’m not guessing about what works in AI-first search. My personal website ranks #1 for “international AI and SEO expert” using these exact strategies.

When I tell you traditional SEO doesn’t work anymore, it’s because I watched it fail in real-time—for my own business and for dozens of travel agencies throughout 2024.

When I tell you I know what works instead, it’s because we built the tools and methodology that solved this exact problem.

The 3-Step Plan That Actually Works

Here’s the truth: You don’t need 50 new blog posts, a complete website redesign, or some massive marketing overhaul.

You need three things:

Step 1: Low-Hanging Fruit Optimization (Weeks 1-4)

We identify the 3-5 pages on your website already ranking on pages 2-3 for valuable keywords. These pages prove Google sees them as relevant—they’re just not optimized correctly for AI-first search.

What happens:

• We run your site through BSM Copilot for AI analysis
• Identify which keywords trigger AI Overviews
• Determine what content gaps exist vs. top-ranking pages
• Create an optimization roadmap for each high-potential page

Why this works: Getting a page from position 15 to position 3 takes weeks, not months. With proper AI Overview optimization, position 3 can generate qualified inquiries even in the zero-click era.

Step 2: Virtual You Content Engine (Weeks 5-8)

We create your “Virtual [Your Name]” micro language model by uploading transcripts from our consultation calls, content you’ve created (blog posts, emails, social media), your responses to client questions, and your expertise about specific destinations.

The AI learns how you naturally explain travel concepts, your unique perspectives, and your communication patterns.

What happens:

• You spend 2-3 hours on recorded consultation calls with us
• We upload that expertise into your Virtual model
• The AI creates content that sounds like you actually wrote it
• Our team reviews and refines everything

Why this works: You don’t have time to write content. But you do have expertise. We capture that knowledge and turn it into ranking content without you spending hours at a keyboard.

Step 3: Authority Building for AI Citation (Ongoing)

We implement our authority-building strategy and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) framework to get you cited in AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other AI platforms.

What happens:

• We find opportunities for you to contribute expert insights to high-authority publications
• Each publication creates third-party validation of your expertise
• AI systems recognize you as an authoritative source worth citing
• Your content appears in AI Overviews alongside (or instead of) competitors

Why this works: AI systems prioritize sources they trust. Every authoritative mention strengthens your entity recognition. Over time, you become the source AI recommends.

Notice what’s NOT in this plan: Months of waiting while we “build strategy.” Paying for generic “SEO services” with vague deliverables. Creating 50 blog posts that may or may not work. Complicated technical implementations you don’t understand.

This is surgical, focused, results-oriented work. We’re not optimizing your entire website. We’re moving the needle on the specific pages that will generate inquiries fastest.

What You Need Before This Plan Works

Before we even discuss strategy, I need to see if you have the right foundation. I’m selective about who we work with because I only want clients where I know we can make a real impact.

Four requirements:

1. Decent Website Health

When I ran Sarah’s site through technical analysis, her health score was 72. That’s workable—I often see sites in the 50s that need major fixes first.

If your site has critical broken elements, loads incredibly slowly, or isn’t mobile-responsive, we need to fix those first. Can’t rank broken sites regardless of content quality.

2. Existing Content That’s Close

The Micro SEO methodology requires content already ranking somewhere. Ideally positions 11-30 for valuable keywords.

Starting from absolute zero? Different project, different timeline, different budget.

3. Active Google Business Profile

Local SEO matters even if you serve clients nationwide. People still search “travel agency near me.”

If your GBP is neglected—no posts, few reviews, incomplete information—that’s low-hanging fruit we can fix quickly.

4. Realistic Expectations

This is where I’m completely transparent, even if it costs me the client.

Budget: Our minimum is $1,500/month. Most travel agencies invest $2,000-$3,000. We require six months.

Timeline:

Months 1-2: Setup, onboarding, Virtual You creation, strategy development. You won’t see dramatic results yet. This is foundation-building.

Months 3-4: First ranking improvements appear. Pages move from page 2 to page 1. Inquiry volume starts increasing.

Months 6+: Compounding effects kick in. Multiple pages ranking. Authority building momentum. Consistent, qualified inquiries.

Anyone promising results in 30 days is lying.

I told Sarah exactly this: “I wouldn’t feel okay taking money from you if I couldn’t deliver what we need to do.” Her initial budget might work for a local bakery needing basic GBP help. For a travel agency with complex content optimization? It’s not enough.

I’d rather lose a prospect through honesty than lose a client through underdelivery.

Real Results: What This Actually Looks Like

Here’s proof this methodology works:

SEO Price Guide Case Study:

I wanted to test our AI-assisted content process. Created a comprehensive guide targeting “SEO Price Guide.”

• 100% AI-assisted using BSM Copilot and Virtual Chris
• Published mid-2025
• Currently ranks #1 for “seo price guide“
• Generates consistent, qualified leads

That’s the complete methodology in action. AI-assisted research and creation, human strategic oversight, optimized for AI citation.

My Personal Rankings:

As noted earlier, search “international AI and SEO expert.” My personal website is #1. That’s not luck or magic—it’s systematic execution of everything I’m teaching you.

Comprehensive authoritative content. Featured.com articles on high-authority sites. Global conference speaking. University teaching (academic credibility). SE Ranking Brand Ambassador status. Consistent value delivery (Friday SEO Tips).

I don’t just teach this methodology. I live it.

Client Success Pattern:

Most clients stay with us for years. Not because of contracts—after six months, it’s month-to-month. They stay because it works.

One client has been with us for 10 years. Not because they’re trapped. Because year after year, the results justify the investment.

The Choice Travel Agencies Face Right Now

You have three paths forward. Let me be honest about each one:

Path 1: Wait and Hope

Keep doing what you’re doing. Hope AI Overviews go away. Hope Google changes course. Hope inquiry volume magically recovers.

3 months: Inquiry decline continues. You cut expenses trying to stay profitable.

6 months: Competitors who adapt are capturing your market share. Their names appear in AI Overviews. Yours doesn’t.

12 months: You’re spending more on paid ads to compensate for lost organic inquiries. Profit margins shrink. The business becomes unsustainable.

18 months: You’re having serious conversations about whether to continue.

Path 2: Hire a Traditional SEO Agency

Pick an agency offering generic SEO services. They’ll optimize meta tags, build backlinks, and create blog content using 2019 tactics.

3 months: You’ve spent $3,000-$5,000. Rankings might improve slightly. Inquiry volume stays flat.

6 months: Agency keeps sending reports showing “progress” on meaningless metrics. Your actual business results haven’t changed.

9 months: You fire them and start the search again, now more skeptical and $15,000-$25,000 poorer.

Path 3: Adapt With Proven AI-First Methodology

Work with an agency that understands post-AI-Overview search and has proprietary tools built specifically for this challenge.

Month 3-4: First pages start reaching page one. You see inquiry volume tick up.

Month 6: Multiple pages ranking. Google Business Profile optimized. Authority building showing results. Inquiries are consistently higher than before.

Month 12: You’re the travel agency appearing in AI Overviews. When travelers ask ChatGPT or Perplexity about your specialty, your name comes up. Competitors are wondering how you’re getting so many inquiries.

Without adapting to AI-first search: You’ll spend the next two years watching inquiry volume decline while competitors capture market share. Eventually, you’ll either close the business or sell it for a fraction of what it’s worth.

With the right AI-first SEO strategy: You become the authority AI systems cite. The agency travelers discover during research. The name that appears in AI Overviews. Market share grows while competitors struggle to understand what changed.

The difference between these outcomes isn’t how much you spend on marketing. It’s about understanding the game has changed and acting accordingly.

Your Next Step Is Simple

If you’re a travel agency owner who’s watched inquiry volume drop recently and needs to know what’s actually happening, let’s talk.

I offer 30-minute diagnostic consultations where we’ll:

Pull up your website and analyze current rankings. Show you whether AI Overviews are appearing for your keywords. Identify specific low-hanging fruit opportunities on your site. Explain honestly whether you’re a good fit for our methodology. Give you an actionable assessment even if we’re not the right match.

No sales pressure. No obligation. No BS.

Just an expert consultation from someone who’s been doing this since the late 90s and has the track record to prove it works.

Not ready to talk yet?

Subscribe to Friday SEO Tips—my weekly LinkedIn e-newsletter where I share current tactics, strategy updates, and what’s actually working in AI-first SEO. It’s free, genuinely helpful, and gives you a taste of how I think about these challenges.

If your site has the right foundation and you have realistic budget/timeline expectations, I’d love to talk.

If not, I’ll tell you honestly what you need to fix first and won’t waste your money.

Either way, you’ll walk away knowing exactly what’s happening and what your options are.

Best,
Chris